The indoor environmental aspects of classrooms in secondary school buildings need to be determined to ensure that they meet the users’ basic requirements. Students’ efficiency and learning productivity can be affected if the classroom’s indoor environment is of poor quality. The question raised here: how can we ensure that the comfort level provided to building users in terms of indoor aspects is up to their satisfaction? Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is an instrument to examine the success of building design and performance after occupancy. It indicates users’ satisfaction and comfort level related with the indoor environment. Considering users as a benchmark, there is a large potential for improvement in buildings’ indoor environmental aspects. As reflected by the title, the study’s main purpose is to evaluate students’ satisfaction and perception of their classrooms’ comfort level along with recommendations to enhance the quality of their indoor environment. The survey method applied in this study is by distributing questionnaires to 382 students in classrooms where physical measurements were taken to determine how environmental aspects affect these students. This is because these students are highly correlated with the level of comfort and productivity in the classroom. To enhance physical satisfaction during the learning process, semi-structured interviews consisting of 35 experts in related fields were selected, of whom 17 experts are those with a technical background while the remaining 18 experts are from non-technical fields. The results of this interview will be integrated in finding the best methods to improve Indoor Environment Quality in the classroom. The paper recommends the adaptation of POE in order to evaluate the indoor environmental aspects of classrooms as significant learning spaces in school buildings that need to be managed and monitored continuously.

Purpose: Retrofitting and rehabilitation are part of the conservation approach in Heritage Building Conservation Guideline 2016 in Malaysia. Heritage buildings can be retrofitted to preserve their culture and history while being given a new lease. Rehabilitation is a preservation requirement that is more flexible since it assumes that the structure has already deteriorated to the point where repairs are required to prevent further deterioration. Although the strategies of these two approaches are different, their combination resulted in sustainable heritage building maintenance. This long-term maintenance strategy is necessary, especially for Malaysia's numerous heritage schools, which have serious maintenance problems as a result of infrequent maintenance, repairs, and funding shortages. Design/methodology/approach: This study involved secondary data from an intensive literature review along with a comparative study from articles review and context analysis. A comparative study was conducted to determine the typical issue with heritage school buildings and the best maintenance practice for these structures. Finally, it involved a SWOT analysis study of retrofitting and rehabilitating heritage school buildings will be discussed in this study as well. Findings: The findings of this study will focus on developing a strategic planning framework and maintenance for heritage school buildings in Malaysia to achieve sustainable maintenance. It will also highlight sustainable maintenance best practices for heritage school buildings in Malaysia. Finally, SWOT analysis will go over the pros and cons of retrofitting and rehabilitation for these buildings. Originality/value: This paper put forward the requirements of strategic planning in heritage school buildings and outlines the significance of sustainable maintenance for educational buildings. It is an alternative for cost savings that has not been extensively investigated in previous studies.

Purpose: Teaching and learning processes are conducted formally in a classroom as the main learning space for schooling system, where it should be implemented effectively to achieve a desired level of satisfaction and comfort for the students. To encourage and sustain students’ motivation for continuous learning, specifically at secondary school level, classroom capacity is increasing significantly. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the guidelines and regulations of building design standard compliance, specifically for classrooms, and suggest the suitability of classroom capacity based on two main courses offered at the secondary school level. Design/methodology/approach: Two sets of perimeters were used in this study to gauge the intended results, namely, mixed method was used to carry out the study. The first indicator was a quantitative method whereby the current area of 20 selected classrooms (length × width) was physically measured and recorded. The second indicator used was a qualitative method, through a semi-structured interview. Findings: The findings showed that 55 per cent of classroom capacity in secondary school buildings complied with the existing guidelines, the stipulated design regulations and the classroom area requirement. The current area of classroom standing is at 2.25 m² per student with an observable increase in students’ satisfaction during the teaching and learning processes. However, the findings from the semi-structured interview highlighted interesting points in relation to the suitability of classroom capacity. The teachers felt that classroom capacity affected performance of students based on two categories, namely, classroom-centred learning and classroom-less learning. The respondents agreed that the classroom-centred learning approach and classroom-less learning approach worked best with a maximum of 22 and 30 students per classroom, respectively. Originality/value: This paper provides the current information, knowledge and findings related with real classroom capacity at a secondary school building that may affect students’ performance, while focus had always been on types of classroom, gadgets and qualified teaching staff. Hardly any valuable attention is given to the space these students spend almost a good part of their day for the rest of the week, over their formative learning period. Perhaps like the model of cars and sitting capacity, model classroom area and maximum capacity explored to ensure objectives irrespective of the driver, the teacher of the class. Therefore, these indicators may assist the school building management, building facilities and other professionals to identify and implement suitable of classroom capacity especially for all classroom-based learning in the schools generally.

Students learning in educational institutions is associated with classroom environment which normally equipped with physical aspects consists of furniture, air-conditioning, fan, lamp, whiteboard, soft board and etc. The effectiveness and efficiency of learning process in the classroom may not be measured only through the students’ ability and capability, whereas student’s concentration and attention during the lesson also influenced by its physical classroom environment mainly related to indoor lighting. In this study, it’s focused on how the students’ learning performance affected by the indoor lighting in the classroom. The scope of this study is within the secondary school building around Selangor. The results showed the current practice in most of the classrooms at school building focused on the usage of artificial lighting compared to natural lighting. Even those aware of its benefit and teachers also agreed students’ learning performance is influenced on quality lighting in a classroom either directly or indirectly through daily activities and tasks during a lesson at school. Students and teachers realized that lighting is important in order to improve the effectiveness of learning and to avoid from any health problem usually related to vision that could result headache.

This paper explores the green building attributes that significantly influenced rental depreciation for conventional buildings from expert perspectives using Malaysia as a case study. The objectives of this study include: (1) identifying the green building attributes for rental depreciation and (2) prioritizing the green attributes via the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. To achieve these objectives, firstly the study identified the green building attributes from the literature and from green building guidelines. The attributes were then validated by expert valuers via a semi-structured interview. Secondly, the attributes were utilized to develop the AHP-designed questionnaire and used to gather feedback from real estate experts. Ten (10) responses were analyzed using the descriptive and AHP techniques. This study has identified the rank of prioritized green building attributes, where the findings suggest the central role of indoor environment quality (EQ), where it ranked the highest in contributing to conventional purpose-built office (PBO) rental depreciation, followed by energy efficiency (EE), green site planning and management (SM), materials and resources (MR), innovation (IN), and water efficiency (WE). The findings allow researchers and practitioners to create strategies for reducing the impact of conventional building rental depreciation and obsolescence due to green building attributes.

Investment in building maintenance management is an effective strategy to control the quality of building performance and its condition. In most countries, maintenance activities are based on the basic management concept, which includes planning, monitoring, and controlling. Thus, building maintenance management system (BMMS) should be applied to various types of properties to allocate the relevant maintenance procedures to the specific building that requires the implementation of maintenance activities. Ordinarily, residential property is more concerned with the building maintenance management system (BMMS) due to the well-maintained assets and facilities, while also retaining the building aesthetically to provide an opportunity for future property investment. The value of buildings really depends on their quality and current condition, and this also points out that accurate maintenance activities for residential property in Malaysia provide maximum benefit to the building's performance. However, building maintenance management in Malaysia is mostly based on the conventional system (also known as a paper-based report) rather than the modern computerized system, which makes it ideally difficult to determine the root causes. This commonly proposes inaccurate maintenance activities for strata-title residential buildings. The weaknesses of the current procedure may affect the overall building performance, besides, building defects can also become more critical without any remedial actions from the building owners. Thus, this research will aid in identifying the fundamental shortcomings of paper-based conventional systems and investigating how a modern computerized BMMS might cope with these challenges. However, this study will focus on strata title properties in Peninsular Malaysia. The variables were measured and assessed using a mixed-methods approach that included both qualitative and quantitative components. Twelve (12) building experts from public and private entities, including the public works department (PWD), local authority (LA), and Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), were interviewed using a qualitative technique. The results from semi-structured interviews were analyzed using descriptive and thematic analyses. Then, 125 respondents were given a questionnaire as part of a quantitative approach, and SPSS version 28 was used to examine the results. The findings are expected to highlight the